


nor are we out of it

by misura



Category: The Hexslinger Series - Gemma Files
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 18:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chess descends to get back what's his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	nor are we out of it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evewithanapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/gifts).



> these books ate up three weeks of my life.
> 
> (I don't regret anything, except maybe that I couldn't let them eat up another three weeks and maybe write the pairing that didn't get as much screen time as this one.)
> 
> have a post-canon treat by way of saying 'thanks for the rec post'?

Chess reckoned that, all in all, an eternity in Hell might well be what Asher Rook deserved. Certainly, it was what Chess had wished on him, now and then - if possibly a good bit more then and a lot less now, these days.

Then again, Hell being what it was, he figured that an eternity down there likely as not added up to a somewhat shorter period of time up here - two months, say.

“You ask me, he didn't much have the look of a man wanting to be saved,” Ed said. Practically-married life looked good on him, Chess s'posed. Made him look happier, but softer, too. More prone to get himself hurt or killed in some venture he had no business taking part in.

“I ain't askin' you,” Chess snapped. “I'm _tellin'_ you.” Didn't take a hex to figure what Ed thought about _that_. Still viewed Chess as some sort of responsibility of his. “And you ain't comin' with. Just wanted to let you 'n' Missus Morrow here know in case - “

Well. On the positive, that last bit got the stubborn and disapproving look off of Ed's face right quick. On the negative, what replaced it wasn't much of an improvement, 's far as Chess was concerned.

“You think I'm letting you go off by your lonesome, you best think again,” Ed said, back to bluster.

Which could've made for an argument lasting hours, 'cept that that was when Yancey spoke up saying: “You just go and be true to him, Mister Pargeter. If that's what you feel's right.”

_And I'll be true to my love,  
if my love be true to me._

but that was just the thing about songs, wasn't it? They always got it wrong - wasn't a fair exchange of give and take, was love.

_I'll be true to my love, even if my love be the death of me._

That sounded just 'bout right.

 

No English Oona waiting for him, this time 'round. Just darkness and silence.

 _Like a grave,_ Chess thought. He'd brought food and drink and his guns, this time 'round - the ones he'd given to Yancey, once, which she'd returned to him right before he left.

“Might be needing these, where you're headed,” she'd said. “Be expecting you to return them once you're back, mind.”

_Nothin' here but me._

Rook had told him, right before. 'bout how everyone went into Hell alone and _stayed_ that way until he was well and truly out of it.

'course, Rook had told him a great many lies. Some truths, too. Those hurt about the same as the lies, so in that respect, Chess didn't see their making any difference.

_Any which way, I'm here now, and I ain't goin' back 'til I've gotten what I came for._

 

“Should have gone with,” Ed said - again.

It had been three months and a handful of days since Chess'd gone. Too long to keep expecting him back victoriously, and, knowing Chess, not nearly long enough yet to expect him to give up.

“Wouldn't have been any use to it,” Yancey said - also a repeat. She felt they were as stuck as Chess was, sometimes, all of them waiting and hoping. Praying, although probably not in Chess's case.

Ed sighed. “Well. I suppose I should be glad he's still alive. That's somethin'.”

Chess had severed the bonds between them nearly a half year ago now. Didn't mean they couldn't still feel him, from a distance. Love him, even, and worry. Didn't take being a god's Priest and Priestess to do _that_.

“Aye.”

 

Days were hard to keep track of, down here. Chess didn't see much point to it, anyway.

He did wonder, on occasion, whether he might have died again without noticing. Didn't seem like him, to have passed quietly in his sleep, but one never knew. Be a pity, if that had happened - not so much for himself, but Yancey and Ed would probably feel bad about it.

Dead or not, his legs were still movin'. Didn't seem to be able to do so without pain, although that didn't seem like conclusive evidence either way. The dead might hurt, too, and suffer, and starve. Not die again, as that would've been too much of a kindness.

Not a lot to see down here, nor to hear. A trickle of water, on occasion. The sensation of hard rock and not-so-soft earth 'gainst his hands.

He might sleep, once in a while, or else simply pass out.

Might be losing his mind, he figured, although it was debatable how great a loss _that_ would've been, considering.

 

Winter came, and then Spring. A season for returns, renewals, or so Yancey'd been telling her foolish self throughout the winter, clinging to her hope and her certainty that Chess yet lived, that he wouldn't be able to simply slip away without her and Ed knowing it instantly.

_And keepin' him, somehow._

In truth, she had no idea what-all they could do to accomplish that particular feat. Chess might still be bursting with mojo, when he felt like it - or when he wanted to, say, put up a farm without any of the hard work usually involved in such enterprises, but she and Ed had, for the most part, gone back to being ordinary folks, trying (and, it must be said, succeeding quite nicely) to make an honest living.

 _“You ask me, he didn't much have the look of a man wanting to be saved,”_ Ed had told Chess, speaking of Reverend Rook, yet Yancey couldn't but wonder if the same might not be said of Chess. Not all the time, certainly - not like he'd been spending his days moping and weeping, not Chess Pargeter, only she and Ed both could tell he'd been hurting.

Was still hurting, likely as not, having lost the first (and to his foolish mind possibly still only) person he'd ever lost, and through no doing of his own, either, not that Yancey thought matters might have been improved any if Chess had pushed the Reverend into that hole, instead of his taking that step himself.

 

Chess dreamt:

Rook, unleashing a tornado on those seeking to hang him for the not-crime Chess had committed / Ed, dragging him out of that house of Pinks, and to Hell with what it might cost him in the long run / Yancey, at her wedding to a man she barely knew who might, perhaps, one day deserve her and love her for who she was

his Ma, always trying to not-quite-kill him, until the day he got Rook to do for her, and no not-quite about it, nor anything particularly quick and kind, the way Chess (he hoped, when he came to think on it) gen'rally had killed himself, thoughtlessly

Ixchel, claiming Rook for her husband (and Rook _lettin'_ her, leaving Chess to be with _her_ , instead), then -

“No,” Chess said, out loud, for all that there was nobody where-all to say it to, except for himself.

 _Be a nice trick you got there, dearie, able to stop a bad dream from going further,_ someone said. _Pity it don't work like that when it's real, hm?_

He had, by now, more or less forgiven his Ma. Had _understood_ her, leastways, which seemed to boil down to the same thing, more or less, and it had occured to him that that there might be the reason she wasn't here anymore, Hell being a place for regrets.

Among other things. Other people. Those who ought to regret their actions and atone for them, 'til they'd paid enough to be allowed out and onwards, to elsewhere.

Begging the question, of course, _at whose say-so?_

Rook's God had never struck Chess as a particularly forgiving kind of fellow, but then, for all that he'd been wielding that Book of his something mighty, it had rather been Chess's impression Rook and him had parted ways some while since.

Ixchel had been _a_ god - or as near as one not to make a difference, but while Rook had done her bidding, acted as her priest, even, Chess didn't feel Rook had truly worshipped her the way he'd knelt before his old God, the one who decreed that queers should all die and then burn in Hell forever, simply for having been made the way God had made them.

Rook's faith in his Lady had been a practical, almost calculated thing, a bit of tit-for-tat with a whole lot of mistakes and foolishness mixed in. Plenty of things to regret in it, that was for damn sure.

Plenty of things to regret and atone for. Two months' worth, easily, and it had probably been longer by now, for all that Chess'd be hard-pressed to say exactly how much longer.

Long enough, though, he felt.

 _And who are you to say so, Chess Pargeter?_ \- but that was a spit-easy question to answer, of course; always had been. Rook might've had faith, once, might've believed in some power higher than hisself, but not Chess.

Chess had only ever believed in two people. Ed and Yancey didn't count; that wasn't faith. Affection, sure, and friendship - love, perhaps, even, of a softer, gentler kind than there'd ever been between him and Rook.

Rook'd been the one he'd put his faith in blindly and absolutely, like a milk-sopped fool who'd never fired a gun, never killed a man, never been offered for another man's use in exchange for money or a quick fix.

And so Rook'd been the one to hurt him, deeper than anyone, rip his heart out and feed it to some bitch-goddess, all for the sake of - well.

Might be Rook's god wasn't such an unreasonable fellow anymore these days after all. Mean, yes, as nails, and about as tough, some would say.

“Ash Rook,” Chess said, through dust-dry lips. “I forgive you your sins.” Tried to mean it, too, although truth be told, he reckoned he might've said anything at this point, if he believed it'd get him Rook back.

Felt like a proper fool, after, when a good ten minutes passed him right by with nothing happening except a blister on his right foot deciding to bother him some more.

Stung like a bitch, nasty enough to make his eyes prick.

 

They found him smack in the middle of the vegetable garden, crushing several young plants beyond hope of recovery. Naked, as a newlyborn babe, but quiet. It was late Spring, still; beginning of Summer, almost.

Warm enough, Ed reasoned, to leave him where he was and not feel bad about it, after, but Yancey would have none of it, and so they took him in, clothing him and feeding him, inasmuch as it was possible to do so.

Biting their tongues and stilling their hands so as not to shake him and demand where Chess was.

Asher Rook, sleeping like a dead man, likely couldn't've told them, anyhow.

 

Done, then. Last trick in his bag, and Chess'd really felt it ought to've worked, but then, clearly, he was no expert. Become a god through no design of his own, and learned quickly enough that nobody able to teach him'd be willing to do so without wanting something in return.

And with that something being a knife in his back, often as not, if not worse, a man figured out right-quick that he might be better off just trying to work things out on his lonesome.

Had he chosen to walk, Chess reckoned finding his way might've been a tricky business, but as things stood, seemed he might as well keep it simple.

The way out was up, and so up he would go, until he got out.

 

“You'll be wantin' a bath, I expect,” was what came out of Ed's mouth, eventually, when Chess came knocking on his and Yancey's door, Winter at his heels.

Chess managed something in between a sob and what might have been a chuckle, once.

Ed took it for a 'yes', anyhow.

 

“Care for someone to scrub your back, darlin'?”

 

So.

 

“Back to outlawry again?” Ed asked, while Yancey doled out dinner, the wet mess Chess had hexed out of existence gone, but neither forgotten nor forgiven.

“I wouldn't think so,” Rook said, as Chess shook his head - not at the same time, but slightly before, as if Chess'd had the thought and Rook had merely voiced it.

“Might be you'll be gettin' some friendly neighbors,” Chess said, leaning back comfortably, as if he hadn't arrived at their door not even three hours ago, face dirty and clothes dust-painted.

Ed took a while to get the meaning of that, and then another one to wrap his mind around the sheer idea of it.

“Might be I could use some neighborly help with the garden,” Yancey said, calm as you pleased. “Among other things.”

“All you need to do is ask, darlin'.” Chess, not Rook.

Which was all very fine, Ed supposed, but still left unanswered some questions he felt might need answering. If not at a dinner table, perhaps.

 

 _”How'd it be if I told you 'no, but thanks for the offer all the same'?”_ Chess had asked, once his heart had stopped trying to leap out through his chest. (No knife-cuts there now, to make it easy.)

_”Fair enough,” _Rook had replied. _”Though it might beg the question of why come for me at all.”_ A beat, to give Chess opportunity to deny it, perhaps. _”As I know you did.”___

___”Perhaps I just wanted to see you sufferin' with my own two eyes, and at my own two hands.”_ _ _

___”Imagine that might be it.”_ _ _

__FOR I AM A VENGEFUL GOD, Chess thought, or heard Rook think, maybe._ _

___”So how 'bout you get over here?”_ _ _

___”Might be a mite foolish, considerin'.”_ _ _

__Chess snorted. _”Be a bit late to be startin' only doin' things that're smart now, Ash.”__ _

___”Yes. I s'pose it is, at that.”_ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> while this was partially written as a fix-it for an utterly perfect, rip-your-heart-out ending, I also felt rather attracted to the idea of Chess being (or having become) Rook's god - or at least his object of faith. 
> 
> and so, the concept of Chess getting Rook out of Hell by forgiving him his sins was born, in all its flawed and naive optimism and I tried to write it here while keeping things at least a little bit in the tone of the books.
> 
> (on a completely different note: I think my automatic spellchecker isn't talking to me anymore, but my beta is awesome for taking a stab at fixing all my mistakes. any that remain are, of course, entirely my own fault.)


End file.
